The last thing I wanted to do today was write about Threads. I haven't been using it much, and the few times I've tried, I haven't liked it much either. For one thing, they're allowing some of the most toxic ...
Oh, here we go. “Companies have no responsibility to use safe practices, every user should just go to the trouble of installing special tools to personally opt out of data mining.”
Do you know what the danger of data mining actually is? It’s not that companies will advertise the perfect bra for your cup size. It’s that they’ll use it to influence politics. You might not know this, but Meta has actually been implicated in dangerous use of data alongside an organisation called Cambridge Analytica in experiments designed to influence elections. They may have had a hand in Donald Trump’s presidency. If you have big enough data, you can effect random changes like making a certain page load half a second slower, and watch the impact on people’s political habits. If you bring those experiments to their conclusion, you will be able to use imperceptibly subtle influences to decide elections. You won’t have to buy a senator anymore, you can pick which one people will vote for.
“Oh just use your technical skills to opt out of tracking”, that’s not why I’m scared of tracking. I’m scared of tracking because it could have my illiterate next door neighbour voting for the Trans Genocide party. My illiterate next door neighbour isn’t going to install anti tracking software. These laws exist for a reason. You have to protect EVERYONE from manipulation if you want to protect anyone. You can’t just protect the smart people with the computer skills, you have to think about the effect that each tiny thing will have on the dumbest people in society.
Oh, here we go. “Companies have no responsibility to use safe practices, every user should just go to the trouble of installing special tools to personally opt out of data mining.”
Do you know what the danger of data mining actually is? It’s not that companies will advertise the perfect bra for your cup size. It’s that they’ll use it to influence politics. You might not know this, but Meta has actually been implicated in dangerous use of data alongside an organisation called Cambridge Analytica in experiments designed to influence elections. They may have had a hand in Donald Trump’s presidency. If you have big enough data, you can effect random changes like making a certain page load half a second slower, and watch the impact on people’s political habits. If you bring those experiments to their conclusion, you will be able to use imperceptibly subtle influences to decide elections. You won’t have to buy a senator anymore, you can pick which one people will vote for.
“Oh just use your technical skills to opt out of tracking”, that’s not why I’m scared of tracking. I’m scared of tracking because it could have my illiterate next door neighbour voting for the Trans Genocide party. My illiterate next door neighbour isn’t going to install anti tracking software. These laws exist for a reason. You have to protect EVERYONE from manipulation if you want to protect anyone. You can’t just protect the smart people with the computer skills, you have to think about the effect that each tiny thing will have on the dumbest people in society.